The major obstacles in cardiac transplantation are the limited availability of donor hearts and the poor quality of donor hearts due to deterioration during storage. Using current practices and preservation solutions, the limit of preservation time is 4-6 hours, and in the United States, all cardiac allografts are presently obtained from brain-dead, beating heart donors maintained on life support systems. Moreover, current practices result in a significant incidence of accelerated vasculopathy in transplanted hearts. As such, there is a pressing need for long-term storage solutions that preserve the structural and physiological integrity of donor hearts.